A School Board of New Faces Is Seated, Giving Will Furry Chairmanship for 2nd Year

For the second time in two years, three of the five Flagler County School Board seats turned over to new members as Janie Ruddy, Lauren Ramirez and Derek Barrs were sworn-in Tuesday evening.

Two years ago Christy Chong, Will Furry and Sally Hunt were sworn-in. Hunt resigned in September. Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Barrs, who’d lost to Ruddy by some 300 votes.




As on the Palm Coast City Council, where the senior member has just two years’ service on the panel, the School Board has never been so short on experience among its members in at least half a century of records: Furry and Chong have a combined four years’ experience between them. Superintendent LaShakia Moore has been leading the district for just 18 months, the school board attorney for many fewer months than that.

Furry had chaired the board for the past year. Customarily, the chairmanship would have gone to a different member for the coming year–usually the vice chair, in this case Chong. Chong, who has a demanding full-time job in addition to parenting young children, appeared uninterested in the job. She nominated Furry for a second year.

There were no objections, no other nominations from the three other board members. There couldn’t be. Each has the capability and authority to lead a board, and possibly with a more measured, less prickly hand than the current chairman. Each has distinguishing qualities that could easily qualify them for the role: years in the top leadership of one of the state’s largest agencies for Barrs, the most education experience of any of the board members for Ruddy, a seasoned professional life for Ramirez. But none was in a position to ask for the title as a rookie. So Furry, grinning through his oath of office, held on to the title by default.

It was a markedly different situation than at the County Commission where, two hours earlier, Andy Dance was unanimously elected to chair the panel for another year–not by default, since that board is not short on experience, but by acclamation. That vote was in recognition for Dance’s particular skills at building consensus and maintaining decorum, and for his command of often intractable commission agendas–skills that Furry has not mastered nearly as well.




Dance of course has been in public office for 16 years, including 12 on the school board, though even his first chairmanship on that board had reflected the same skills he has merely honed since.

Furry returned the favor and nominated Chong as vice chair for a second year. Ruddy, after asking whether she could nominate herself (she could), did so. It was a daring move, testing the board’s alignment: she knew which way Furry and Chong would vote. She did not know which way Ramirez and Barrs would, though she probably suspected the outcome: Barrs joined Furry and Chong, Ramirez voted with Ruddy. The move was also a signal to the majority that Ruddy would not be a passive of deferential board member simply for being in the minority. (For instance, she requested that the employees’ health plan contract be revisited. Barrs and Ramirez had requests of their own.)

Ruddy’s daughters had driven in from the University of Florida in Gainesville to be part of the occasion, as had her brother, who’d flown in from Atlanta. Ruddy cast positioned herself not so much as a pioneering board member as “following in my daughter’s footsteps.” One of her daughters, Kyleigh Ruddy, had been a student board member in the 2020-21 school year.

“I want to just share how humbling it is to be up here, and I appreciate everybody’s patience as I stumble my way through my first board meeting,” Ruddy said as the meeting came to a close. “I also want to share the wonderful job that the entire team that Superintendent Moore has put together in the orientation process we met with every department. They were very patient and with my questions, and I can see the cohesiveness around a common vision that I definitely had not seen during my tenure as an educator in the classroom. So I feel that with some stability and we’re just in store for amazing things.”




Ramirez also spoke of the orientation’s thoroughness, describing it as a monthlong process: Moore had coordinated it in such a way as to ensure that the board members met with all directors and attended several of the meetings in the run-up to their swearing-in. “Thank you for helping with everything, and I appreciate being here,” Ramirez said, ending her comments for the evening on the district motto: “I’m looking forward to growing and, you know, just moving Flagler forward.”

Barrs described the orientation experience as “drinking water through a fire hose” before crediting the numerous district staffers who shepherded him along, if a bit faster than the other two new arrivals since Barrs was only appointed on the last day of October. “I’m sure we’re going to disagree” at times, he said, referring to board business, “we’re going to work it out together. That’s the way our democracy works, is for us to work together and to have the best solution that’s going to benefit our children.” He recognized Cheryl Massaro, whose term, along with that of Colleen Conklin, just ended: Massaro was in the audience.

Furry, chuckling nervously, termed himself “very encouraged” by the first meeting before Moore closed the meeting on the 63rd day of school. “We live our guiding principles each and every day,” Moore said.